


riot rhythm

by losebetter



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book Clubs - Freeform, Buddy Comedy - Freeform, Illustrated, M/M, Male Sexuality, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:18:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6172456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/pseuds/losebetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Got yourself a deal,” he says, and because he can’t resist, “Red.”</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>MacCready and the sole survivor never meet in Goodneighbor, and the former is forced to rejoin the Gunners - but not for long. In which the Gunners are a glorified jock squad, MacCready neatly organizes his priorities, and late is better than never.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so. there are some really quick points that i feel the need to address before i get this thing going, and then i'll be out of your hair forever, promise promise. HERE WE GO:
> 
> • this story will play fast and loose with fallout canon, particularly in terms of what the sole survivor is doing, potentially also with canon for the gunners/etc that predates _fallout 4_. the truth is that i've done a lot of research for this fic already, and i can't be assed to rush through _fallout 3_ for the sake of un-building a world i have already spent so much effort building. if things don't match up perfectly, i apologize.
> 
> • as per my usual affliction, the ss in this story is [rook howard](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/tagged/ss%3A-rook) \- in simpler terms, he looks [like](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/post/141803608201/i-finally-found-rooks-lighting-and-celebrated-by) [this](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/image/136599678601), and he likes long hikes on wasted nature trails, wasted hikes on long nature trails, and hiked up legs & happy trails on wasted beds. cheers!
> 
> • raising my glass to miss [asexualshepard](http://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualshepard/pseuds/asexualshepard) again, for cheerleading me through all of the things. ♥ love also to [Q](http://queen-schadenfreude.tumblr.com) & [satan](http://pipbae.tumblr.com), my other fartners in crime. these three do nothing but support and encourage and inspire me, it's disgraceful.
> 
> • i mention 'sexuality' as well as 'jock squads' - the point of this fic isn't to staple sexuality to anyone's forehead, but i thought it might be interesting to explore what little we know about how the gunners treat one another ( _"you and your girlfriend," maccready says to winlock re: barnes_ , with no affection in his voice) and how it might inform maccready's understanding/exploration of his own bisexuality. 'casual homophobia' might be the word for that, though it never becomes more gratuitous than it is inherently. i hope. sorry if it bugs you! it felt important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was originally posted on tumblr [here](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/post/139017909901/fic-fracture-1900-words-maccreadymss-au), under the name _fracture_. no illustrations this time! chapter two incoming in a few hours, i'm just about to lose my draft space, haha.

MacCready isn’t expecting to find anything in the attic - the truth is, he doesn’t want to be headed up there at all. Right Wide is one of five slipshod houses in this particular territory, but it’s got shitty roof access and busted out windows, and MacCready expects the whole place to collapse in on itself at any time.

He finishes his backward trek up the first flight of stairs, and makes an abrupt about-face to start his next - the last one before the attic floor.

Tessa _knows_ he doesn’t like heights, of course she does. He’d been in the room when she’d assigned him to Winlock again (and wasn’t _that_ proof enough that he was on her shitlist), had dismissed them both with a flick of her bare wrist and an order to ‘rough him up a little bit, teach him what we do to quitters.’

Assholes.

And yeah, he could’ve told Winlock to get fucked - probably could’ve spat on him just to make all his little underlings start chittering. (MacCready might be a private again, but the little people remember the score, and he’d saved more of their lives than Winlock, that’s for damn sure.) But he hadn’t, had only tipped his chin up and watched his squad leave Right Wide via the plank on the third floor, nothing but his orders (“get up there - if he’s there, _put a bullet in his head_ ”) for company.

MacCready doesn’t know who the mark is - has caught snatches of information about a ‘readheaded pain in the ass,’ something about someone sticking their fingers where they shouldn’t at Mass Pike, and nothing else. It’s all he ever expects to know about him, too - if the guy’s been dodging them this long he probably knows better than to corner himself in an attic, and he’s not feeling overly motivated to keep looking for him once he’s scouted the place.

He eases up the stairs, back to the crumbling railing, and the last step creaks when he sets his boot on it.

When he places his other boot on the floor above it and looks up, he’s staring down the barrel of a 10mm.

_Well, fuck me_ , he thinks - and his hands are already in place on his rifle, but it’s facing the floor in front of him, and experience dictates that it won’t do much good there. 

“Easy,” he hears - and he lets himself glance away from the pistol for long enough to catalogue who’s shooting it. He doesn’t take note of much besides a mop of red hair piled in a high bun, but it’s enough. His finger itches toward the trigger of his rifle, but he knows he couldn’t pull a trick shot like that out of his ass, and the more he hesitates the more impossible it becomes.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the guy says. His eyes are sharp, and MacCready notices them flicking to the stairwell, circling around without ever quite letting MacCready out of his sight. _He’s smart._

“Got an interesting way of showing it,” MacCready says, and his heart is pounding in his chest, adrenaline turning his saliva to hot steel in his mouth. His voice doesn’t waver, which he imagines is something no one will think to write on his tombstone. If he even gets one, which he doubts more and more every day.

MacCready senses the hesitation before it happens - the pistol wavers, just slightly, and MacCready’s rifle is up, the guy in his scope, before his next blink.

_Check_ , he thinks, a rush. Everything feels centered on a dirty smudge marring the mark’s forehead. He forces the guy’s voice out of his head, makes himself forget the brief interaction they’d had - the give and take of a few sentences that could’ve been enough if they were anyone else, anywhere else.

The mark’s voice makes something in his stomach shiver when he hears it again, too well-trained to let it take him over on the outside:

“Please.” MacCready lets his bottom lip drop just slightly, enough for a breath. “ _Don’t shoot me_.”

MacCready breathes, in and then slowly out. “You’re not in much of a position to be making demands,” he comments, because it’s true. The guy’s still got his pistol up, which means he’s either brave, or - or.

(‘Brave or stupid,’ a comic book villain supplies in MacCready’s head - but he thinks, _stupid has no place here_. There’s no room for stupid, not for someone whose heart is beating in the barrel of their gun, decision already made. Stupid would’ve made a run for the hollow window the second MacCready’d brought his gun up, and the mark is still there, back straight. He feels an odd rush of respect for him, even as his pointer trembles with a minute flex, the motions familiar.)

“It wasn’t a demand,” he says. And then - maybe he’s stupid after all, because in one fluid motion he’s flipped the pistol in his hand to ditch the trigger, and his palms are up next to his head, the gun loose in his right. MacCready gets an unobstructed view of his front for the first time, and files details away. Dirty leather jacket, dirty knot of red hair, dirt spattered across his cheeks and arms over the suggestion of freckles. His eyes are pale but he doesn’t look drunk or high, and MacCready can feel their focus on him like the whisper of a touch, irritating little pulls up his spine. There’s a blocky terminal interface on his left wrist.

He looks like a traveler, but what strikes MacCready is that he could be _anyone_. 

He could believe the guy was one of those Children of Atom freaks as easily as a Brotherhood initiate, and it sends a chill up the back of his neck. His sense of self-preservation pulls at him like an insistent child, frustrated by the lack of an easy read. He’s dangerous, and MacCready doesn’t give an inch. He steps onto the landing with a clean roll of his heel and makes a little half-circle; the guy’s alone and there’s nothing beside him, no detonators, no traps.

“You’ve been causing a lot of trouble for the Gunners,” he prompts. He doesn’t care, not really - but it’s something to get the guy talking. “Got some of the top generals looking for you - I wouldn’t want to be you right now.” He tries not to think about how he almost had been, how close he’d come to being on the wrong side of Tessa’s orders. (‘ _Alive or dead_ ,’ is what the conscripts had said, and maybe he should be grateful to be threatening Red right now.)

“Is that what you heard?” the mark says, and there’s something to it, like he’s joking with himself. “I got no problem with you guys. All y’all are the ones who won’t quit pointing shit at me.” He gives the barrel of MacCready’s rifle a crosseyed look, and MacCready vacillates between ‘brave and stupid’ another couple of times. He meets MacCready’s eyes again. “I don’t like being shot, and if your friends don’t understand that, I find I have to shoot ‘em to drive the point forward. It’s the ugly truth.”

MacCready’s finger twitches on the trigger, and something in his gut says Red had seen it happen.

The tragedy of this, MacCready thinks, is that he even sounds like he means it, like the truth is more than a desperate ace thrown down for one of the most ruthless sharpshooters in the Capital Wasteland, like it’s something he breathes, spread arms letting MacCready get a good look at his chest as it moves.

“Please,” the mark repeats. “I - I really don’t think you wanna shoot me.”

“That a threat?” MacCready snaps, even though his gut knows that Red’s not wrong.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” the guy says, easy and breezy, and his tone speaks volumes. He thinks he’s already won.

The floors below them are silent, Winlock and Barnes and the rest off in other buildings, scouting or, more likely, drinking in preparation to pull the trigger on each other, weed out the new recruits. Something in MacCready’s throat feels sour all over again, the twist of self-awareness that had motivated him out of the Gunners in the first place flaring up with a vengeance.

At a crawl, forehead to adam’s apple to floating ribs to balls - just in case he had to make the shot after all, he tells himself - he lowers his gun.

“You’re gonna get me into trouble,” MacCready says lowly, and it comes out softer than he’d planned.

Red grins - a monstrous, buoyant thing that lights up his whole face under all the dust - and lowers his hands, tucking the pistol into a holster on his skinny hip.

“Saucy,” he says, like his life hadn’t been a split-second from ending - or maybe that’s what had done it, maybe he’d been too close to death to be serious. MacCready knows the feeling. “That a promise?” The tease in his tone makes MacCready’s heart thud in his chest, rabbit-quick, echoed in the hollows of his stomach from the inside.

“Maybe,” he allows, and feels the smile in his cheeks. The part of MacCready that lives for heists, for rebellion - for the adventure of it all - sings in his blood. “You think you can lose ‘em without getting full of holes?” he asks, astonished that he genuinely wants to find out.

Red throws him another grin, but this time there’s something between his teeth - a second later he pulls it back, and MacCready watches him blow a little pink bubble, the pop like an exclamation mark, the smallest battle cry. He snaps it once behind his teeth and hoists one leg out the nearest window. It’s showy of him, like he’s trying to make a new first impression even though MacCready doesn’t think he is.

“We’ll see,” he says, altogether too merrily for someone about to vault himself out of a five-story building. “I get out of this alive and you wanna become a fugitive, meet me at Poseidon.”

The offer is tempting, and Red’s energy moreso - anyone that charismatic has gotta have an in, has gotta know something MacCready hasn’t tried. He mentally maps out the ruins, remembers the desk in Left Flat where he’d stashed his caps. It’s doable.

“Got yourself a deal,” he says, and because he can’t resist, “Red.”

The guy cackles at that, and shifts to take a seat on the busted windowsill, both legs hanging out of the building now. “Take care, sweetheart,” he throws over his shoulder. “Better not stand me up.”

And before MacCready can respond to _that_ \- can process that it had been teasing as much as _goodwill_ , an earnest assurance of luck hidden in a barb like the pills MacCready had needed to take for his nosebleeds once, buried in with his food so he wouldn’t have to look at them for what they were - before he can take another step, Red is gone.

He hears the crash of wood splintering, and the ruins come alive again, bullets on steel and plywood, and - somewhere out there, some crazy mark’s delighted laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmurs to the empty room. He flicks his eyes to a window on a different wall, the one facing out toward Left Flat - then he shakes his head, snickering to himself. “Yeah, you too.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here begins new stuff! :) two illustrations this time, and a daring escape, sort of. maccready washes off some paint. thanks guys!

MacCready filches a shoulder bag before he starts his watch. He dumps everything out of it except for a taped up stash (he shakes it a couple of times and gauges about thirty caps, which is only enough because it has to be, now) and slips his own belongings in: five grenades and a snubnosed .44, in case his rifle bites the dust. Two pairs of dry socks, a lighter, a full ammo box, his own case of caps, a beat-up paperback _(The Brothers Karamazov)_ , and Lucy’s toy soldier, slipped into an inside pocket.

He shuts the heavy door of the makeshift barracks behind him and feels a thrill in his stomach, the idea that he’ll never have to do it again. It’s familiar, the ghost of his last escape attempt heavy in his mind - but he thinks about Red’s grin, his long fingers on the windowsill, about the wild whooping he’d heard through the ruins from his lazy position in the attic, and the anxieties lose their teeth. 

There’s something about him. MacCready doesn’t know what it is, but he’s prepared to find out whether or not he can use it.

The night isn’t silent - privates are posted up everywhere especially following Red’s embarrassing (hilarious) freedom, and the Gunners have never been subtle - but it’s dark enough that MacCready can breathe, can almost pretend, until he comes up on the previous watch. His hair is slicked back with pomade, but it looks too greasy under the harsh spotlight as he passes through it, and his smile isn’t much better.

“Well _well_ , Mac _Cready_.” He drags it out, even, takes MacCready’s relative calm out back and shoots it.

MacCready nods, jaw set. “Jones.”

“The golden boy. Heard they found you in Goodneighbor, bending over for some tweaked out shuffler fuck.”

MacCready adjusts the bag over his shoulder, his heart feeling too close to the front of his chest. “Yeah? Winlock tell you that when you had his nuts in your mouth?” He knows Jones wouldn’t give a shit one way or the other if he cursed but it feels good to get creative, secure in the knowledge that one asshole isn’t worth breaking his promises.

Jones doesn’t even have the honor to look like MacCready’d spoken, still grinning wide, showing off his missing front teeth. MacCready runs his tongue over his own, waiting.

“ _The second coming_ ,” he says seriously. He hocks something onto the street - a show of respect that it hadn’t hit MacCready’s boots.

“Go to bed, Jones.”

Finally, he takes a wavering step toward the barracks. “Waitin’ up for you, sugar.” MacCready turns his head to hide the plain disgust on his face. “You’re 4M tonight.” And then, in what already feels like a cheap imitation: “Don’t stand me up.”

4M on the collapsed highway. MacCready passes underneath it, passes the ramp up to his post, and walks straight through.

He doesn’t look back.

* * *

It feels like only minutes before he’s standing next to the _Poseidon Energy_ sign, and MacCready sends up a quick prayer that it had just been the adrenaline; he feels like whoever the 6R watch is in Quincy could spit and hit the back of his neck, and doubt tickles between his shoulders.

He rolls them, indignant, and makes a quick break from the sign to a nearby car, junked up and rusted in place.

 _Meet me at Poseidon,_ he thinks. _Sweetheart._

“Yeah,” MacCready murmurs, “fine. _Where_.”

Poseidon isn’t small, and for all that it seems quiet enough outside, MacCready has a sinking feeling that peeking through the wide metal doors is going to end up in more excitement than he’s equipped for. He adjusts the strap of his bag against his chest, his heart pounding a little more heavily than he’s comfortable with.

He doesn't lower his hand, blunt fingernails digging in absent anxiety against the leather - he honestly has no idea what he’ll do if Red doesn’t show, or - maybe worse, if he does but MacCready can’t _find_ him. He’s already unwilling to return to Quincy, but meandering around this far south makes going toe-to-toe with a Deathclaw a distinct possibility, and his lungs ache just thinking about trying to scamper his way out of that mess.

A sharp whistle cuts through his morose thoughts, and for a split-second he’s almost certain he’s been caught already. He crouches lower behind the heap of scrap metal serving as his cover, catches movement through the car’s window, a flash of something too quick and far away to see clearly in the dark -

And then, smoke. MacCready squints. A smoke signal, curling up over the nearby ridge and out from behind the plant, impossible to miss in the moonlight.

It isn’t a confirmation, and he knows it. But the primal part of him that had been curled up tight with fear makes its first step toward relief, hope nudging it along.

_You’re desperate_ , he thinks, but he’s got no spare energy to argue with himself. He makes a habitual check around him and then darts out from behind the car, boots skidding on loose asphalt and sending pieces of it trundling down the hill and into rough earth. 

The source of the smoke isn’t far, a modest fire pit hidden below an outcropping of scaffolding. A shadow plays in front of the actual fire - just one, and almost certainly human, and MacCready relaxes a fraction more.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when the figure turns toward his approach, and the only thing he can see is a pair of squares a little higher than his eye level, blindingly green as if illuminated from within.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he seethes unsteadily, faltering a step and twisting his rifle up into his hands. He’s too close for anything more than a crapshoot, but he’s about ready to jam the butt of his rifle through something’s skull.

The squares go slanted, and then something appears below them: the muted glow goes soft, hits white teeth in the shape of a crooked grin.

“Runaway,” greets Red’s voice, as smooth as MacCready remembers it. He’d seen the grin move, the lit teeth separate, but he still can’t quite figure out what he’s seeing. He squints.

“Yeah, uh,” MacCready says. He swallows thickly, then thinks, _fuck it_. “Red? That you?”

The figure laughs - and yeah, that’s _definitely_ him - and the green glow dims slightly. MacCready can just make out Red’s arm, his eyes adjusting to the dark, and he follows it up to his hand to find it resting against his own temple.

“It’s me,” he confirms. “Sorry - did I spook you? Everyone says the goggles make me look like a lunatic, but I guess I forget when I don’t got anyone else around to remind me I’ve got ‘em on.” He chuckles good-naturedly, a bizarre contrast to MacCready’s racing heart.

Red taps his temple, lips pursed in a sly smile. “They let me see in the dark,” he explains, and that actually does make a lot of sense, now that MacCready has the time to consider it and doesn’t feel like he’s about to get turned inside-out by the Mechanist.

“They are sort of…” Ostentatious. _Enormous_ , considering the size of Red’s head. “…weird-lookin’,” MacCready hedges.

Red hums, seeming to accept this, and he turns on his heel, showing MacCready his back and gesturing for him to follow as he heads toward the fire.

“Sorry we’re a little close to your friends, there,” he offers, pulling the goggles off his eyes and up onto the crown of his head. He meets MacCready’s eyes once they’re both at the fire and nods, businesslike. “Way I figure it there were a lot of shadows here, and it seemed like our safest bet. We should be able to break here and then make an easy getaway - long as you don’t mind getting a little wet,” he finishes, one side of his mouth twisting playfully upwards.

MacCready’s stomach flips at that, and he almost questions it - but finds he can’t, his nerves too frayed to chase Red's teasing.

“H - how’d you get here, anyway?” MacCready asks, groping for a safer subject. “Didn’t this place used to be overrun with raiders?”

Red’s got a sharp canine in one corner of his mouth that adds something mildly threatening to his smile - MacCready knows this now, because he’s still grinning, but there’s something to it now that makes his shorthairs stand on end. With the oversized goggles and hair every which way he looks like a madman, and MacCready finally feels like he’s met the man who’s been making idiots of the Gunners’ best for weeks.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he replies, chipper. MacCready believes him. "Have you eaten yet?"

“Erm.” He hasn’t. He glances to the fire and sees that Red has a covered pot on, but he’s not nearly hungry enough to trust it. “No, but…” He trails off, and gives Red a sheepish shrug. _What can you do, right?_

Red only nods, undeterred but not pushy. “That’s fair. It’s leftovers in broth anyway, ain’t really my finest hour.” He puts his hands on his hips, then rolls one shoulder. MacCready hasn't known him for long, but he seems to be in constant motion, all bony angles juxtaposed with the peculiar set of a dancer's fluid movements. “Feel free to drop your shit next to mine - " he points, and MacCready looks from his elegant finger to the metal support he's pointing to, and the big traveler's pack leaned up against it - "or wherever. If you don't want to eat, I might suggest trying to catch some shuteye while we're grounded here."

"Yeah, alright."

Everything in MacCready feels sluggish but he makes his way to Red's pack, slides his own bag off his shoulder to rest it on a patch of dead grass just beside it. After some deliberation, he keeps his rifle slung across his back. Just in case.

He turns back toward the fire to see Red setting another piece of wood in the pit, a couple of whispery drags through the dirt and cinders until he deems it done with. There's a kind of deliberately unguarded curiosity to his features, and he casts his eyes up toward MacCready's behind a lick of flame as it catches on the new wood.

Red inclines his head toward MacCready’s face. “They tattoo that on you?” His voice is carefully neutral.

It takes MacCready a second. “ _Oh._ Um - no.” Out of habit, he closes his eyes, presents his face in full. “It’s just paint. Had to get it redone when I - um.”

 

He doesn’t continue, but again, Red doesn’t push. When MacCready opens his eyes again, he’s a little surprised to see the thoughtful look on his face. Not threatened, then.

“I figured it was a Gunner thing,” Red says, instead of pointing out MacCready’s botched sentence, the one that had gurgled in his throat like cyanide when he’d almost spilled too much to someone he’d been pointing his rifle at not twelve hours ago. “It’s the crossbones, right?” Red draws an X in the air with his finger as he averts his gaze, rearranging the firewood in quick bursts with an ashy tire iron. “Like from the skull?”

He isn’t wrong, but MacCready shifts his weight, his hands balled into fists. Inexplicably he thinks of Duncan, feels the ache of it deep in his slim chest.

Some part of him - the childish part - _one_ of the childish parts - wants to let it go. Red’s in no danger with that assumption, and there’s nothing in it tying MacCready to him. It almost seems too convenient - if he hadn’t known better, MacCready might’ve been on guard for Red to be some kind of Gunner plant - and maybe _that’s_ why it feels wrong, the simple explanation obvious as the coward’s way out.

The truth is that if MacCready hadn’t needed a partner so damn bad, he wouldn’t be here. Red’s harebrained invitation is the first opportunity he’s gotten to be something other than completely _alone_ since Goodneighbor, and he can practically feel the difference already. Red is _going somewhere_ , and that means MacCready could be going somewhere, too.

Alone is killing him, he knows - steals all the comfort out of the minimal sleep he manages to get, makes every day feel longer, like he’s got one foot in his grave and all he’s doing is dragging it with him, making the hole wider. Alone _terrifies_ him, makes every shadow into a threat.

But - his chest aches. It’s _not alone_ that matters. _Not alone_ means he can’t cut and run, can’t just leave his life behind no matter how much he wishes he could be anyone but himself. There’s someone counting on him, a heart four-hundred long miles away that he has to keep beating.

“Sort of,” he answers. “It’s - you see where it crosses.” He knows it well, can’t feel the thick paint between his eyebrows anymore but knows exactly how he’d looked before, remembers seeing it in the mirror every morning and night before he’d become too disgusted to check.

“It’s a reminder,” he continues, grim. “It’s for them. So if you turn tail, they know right where to shoot you.”

Red is quiet for a long time. Minutes, surely, where MacCready stands his ground, his breaths halted.

_This is it_ , he thinks, because he knows exactly how it sounds.

_So you joined a cult. Do you like killing people? How can I trust you?_

_This was a mistake._

Finally, Red’s eyes meet his - they’re sharp again, the rain-clear larkspur blue MacCready remembers seeing at the end of his rifle, the neutrality long-gone.

“Here,” he starts, and he pulls at a worn green scarf on his bicep, untying the knot, looping it off; he holds it out to MacCready and jerks his head further from the fire. “There’s a water pump over there, you can use that to wipe it off.”

MacCready hesitates. “You got a better plan for me, then?” It’s not what he means to ask, but he’s not going to show his hand so fast. The wasteland has taught him this, if nothing else: people care when you’re useful to them.

Red’s not looking at him anymore, though, the warm glow of the fire reflecting in his eyes, ghosting shadows under the loose fall of his hair and throwing his strong profile into sharp relief.

“No,” he admits. “But they ain’t gonna have one more excuse to put a bullet in your head. Not anymore.”

Which, MacCready supposes, is fair enough. He doesn’t argue.

He's too exhausted to think too symbolically about what he's doing, watching the crackling flecks of cool paint rub off onto Red's scarf. The spigot water is cold and his skin stings afterwards, but he feels lighter for it, sighs when he wipes his dirty fingers across his head and sees them come back paint-free, if not completely clean.

Red smiles at him when he goes to return his scarf, but he says nothing and MacCready thinks it's going to end there - until Red pauses in spreading out the dirty fabric to dry above the fire, quietly clears his throat.

"Runaway, hold up."

When MacCready looks to him he finds his face oddly serious, brows knit. "Yeah? What is it?"

Red picks at the fraying fabric at his knee. "Have you got a name? Something else I can call you?"

MacCready hesitates. He almost tells him, too, genuinely considers it. But he feels sore, worn out. He's already given too much.

"Runaway is perfect, actually," he says, and gives Red a nod. "For now."  
   


* * *

  
  
They agree to a short rest.  _You're_   _dead on your feet as it is_ , Red had told him,  _and I've got dinner to eat anyway, I'll be up a while. Get some sleep._

MacCready isn't sure he'll be able to, not with so much on the line, but his body seems much more easily convinced. He hadn't bothered with a bedroll (although Red had offered), and even with nothing but his bag and coat for a pillow, he can feel his muscles relaxing, his body relieved to be getting a break from the constant stress.

He falls asleep between one breath and the next, and wakes up in Little Lamplight.

It isn't strange for MacCready to dream of his childhood home necessarily, but often the dreams turn murky, blur imagination with memory. By comparison, this dream in particular feels achingly clear. Humidity touches the back of his neck, where he knows he's been sweating.

Lucy stands in front of him - younger than she was, although something wistful in him tells him that her smile never aged, not really.  _Timeless_ is the word he's looking for, but he doesn't know it then, and doesn't care.

_You're gettin' pretty good with that, then?_

He rubs his thumb under his nose, confident when it doesn't come away bloody.

_Sure am! Bet you anything I can hit that bottle from thirty paces._

Lucy's smile becomes brighter, her gentle eyes squinted. She's humoring him, taking the piss, but he doesn't know that yet, either.

_Thirty paces, huh? What about forty?_

_Fifty!_ he crows, because he knows he can make the shot. He's good. He'll make the shot.

Lucy's laughter makes him blush because it made him blush back then, because some things never change, and there are a lot of ways he still feels like the mangy kid who can't stop stumbling out of his depth.

 _Okay, hero_ , she says.  _Make the shot_.

He will.

His form comes naturally to him now, elbows a little awkward but the rifle steady as he leans in toward the scope. It's a little too big for him, but he's figured out how to compensate, and he can make the shot, because he's made it before, because it's only fifty paces when he's done it at eighty and because when he sits down Lucy sits beside him, watching.

He takes his time with it, sets it up as perfectly as he knows how.

Lucy shifts closer, her palms against the dirt and then her leg against his leg, her smile in his peripheral vision.

MacCready squints, but his mouth twitches up at the corner, just once, when he feels her lean in close to his ear. He's going to make the shot and impress the girl, because he's the hero.

He takes in a breath -

             --  _ **HEY!!!**_

_\- FUCK! --_

   

He misses the shot.

He has no idea how far away the bullet hits, only knows that he'd flailed wildly and shot it straight into the dirt, that his ears are ringing because he hadn't covered them - and he hadn't covered them because - because Lucy, because he thought he was going to get kissed just behind his flushed ear and now Lucy is laughing at him, but it's not a mean laugh, either. Or maybe it is, and he's already too in love with her to notice.

 _I have a question_ , she says then, almost primly, sitting on her hands like she hadn't just shaved years off MacCready's life from the fright.

 _What is it_ , he asks, because he's a dumbass.

He can still remember the way she'd looked at him, like - well. Like he was a dumb kid who'd just gotten caught trying to impress her.

_Why d'you close one eye when you shoot?_

MacCready blinks slowly, but sees no reason to lie.

_It's what they do in all the comic books._

_\-- DUMMY!!_

Yeah, he'd probably deserved that, too.

_You can't just imitate everything you read! What happens when some mungo comes up on your blind spot, huh? What'll you do then?_

It's a strange thing, to both be aware of the crushed shell of his thirteen-year-old self and also to be living it, to feel the feel the hot shame of a scolding. Mayor or not, Lucy is older, and she'd used her power sparingly.

MacCready respects her, and he'd missed the shot.

He's crestfallen, until he feels her small hand on his shoulder.

_Hey,_  she repeats, much more softly this time. MacCready'd missed the shot, but something tightens in his chest and he wonders if she might kiss him anyway. Heat blooms over his cheeks.

“ _Hey_ ,” again, more distantly.

_Hey_ , like how a pretty girl saw him trying to be a macho show-off and called him on it, right to his face, without having to say any more than that to get him to listen.

“Hey, Runaway - not to interrupt your beauty sleep, but I’m thinkin’ it’s about go time.”

MacCready wakes up all at once.

Red is crouched quietly in the dark beside him, a respectful distance away. The fire is nothing but coals now, and MacCready fights the shivers as the resulting cold hits him, reaching for his coat where it’s balled up under his head.

“We’re good?” he asks clumsily, but Red only nods. “How long was I out?”

Red stands up from his squat, one of his knees cracking. “A couple hours,” he reports. “No big deal, and it’s probably a good thing you got it.” He stretches, long arms swung up above his head. "You'll wanna be on your toes for this."

MacCready cracks his neck and gets to his feet, wrapping his scarf more tightly around his throat.

He closes his eyes, just briefly. Lucy’s face, so clear before, is blurred by exhaustion now, and he feels his heart clench.

“Okay,” he says, and breathes. “Okay.”


End file.
